Under iOS 8, All Third-Party Web Browsers Can Be As Fast As Safari

Apple might have improved Safari’s performance with iOS 7, but Cupertino restricted this development meaning third-party Web browsers couldn’t achieve the same level of power as Apple’s own Safari app. Fortunately, however, this has now changed as of iOS 8.

A few teasers: API is the same across iOS and OS X, and the new WKWebView on iOS is running JS just as quickly as Safari.

This is of course exciting news: if you use an alternative Web browser to Safari (like Google’s Chrome app, for example), or even get work done using an app that features a built-in browser — like Ole Zorn’s Editorial — the above change means a serious speed boost is in the cards. Through offering up its Nitro Javascript engine, such third-party browsers should perform far better than they did under iOS 7.